News / Local
Zesa mulls tariff hike
22 May 2021 at 02:56hrs | Views
ENERGY deputy minister Magna Mudyiwa has told Parliament that the Zimbabwe Electrical Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) is considering hiking tariffs to raise money for operations, including acquisition of new service vehicles.
Mudyiwa made the remarks on Wednesday while responding to questions by MPs on the ministry's plan on purchase of vehicles for ZETDC maintenance works.
"We are looking at reviewing the tariffs and if that review is granted, then ZETDC can have funds to purchase the much needed vehicles for their operations," Mudyiwa said.
"The debtors who owe huge amounts to ZETDC are mostly local authorities which we cannot switch off to enforce payment, some government departments and some few domestic users, but we cannot increase the tariffs."
She added: "While we are working on how we can collect our revenue from our usual debtors, being local authorities, we cannot switch off local authorities for humanitarian purposes.
"We are not penalising those citizens, but the operational costs have gone up, economics tells us that everything has gone up since last year."
She also bemoaned vandalism of power infrastructure "All those copper cables are being targeted by the vandals and that is one set back that ZETDC is going through.
"They are failing to replace the copper cables that have been stolen. It is an exercise that is going on to try and replace those cables with the aluminium cables," she said.
Mudyiwa made the remarks on Wednesday while responding to questions by MPs on the ministry's plan on purchase of vehicles for ZETDC maintenance works.
"We are looking at reviewing the tariffs and if that review is granted, then ZETDC can have funds to purchase the much needed vehicles for their operations," Mudyiwa said.
"The debtors who owe huge amounts to ZETDC are mostly local authorities which we cannot switch off to enforce payment, some government departments and some few domestic users, but we cannot increase the tariffs."
She added: "While we are working on how we can collect our revenue from our usual debtors, being local authorities, we cannot switch off local authorities for humanitarian purposes.
"We are not penalising those citizens, but the operational costs have gone up, economics tells us that everything has gone up since last year."
She also bemoaned vandalism of power infrastructure "All those copper cables are being targeted by the vandals and that is one set back that ZETDC is going through.
"They are failing to replace the copper cables that have been stolen. It is an exercise that is going on to try and replace those cables with the aluminium cables," she said.
Source - newsday
